The journal Social Sciences and Missions / Sciences sociales et mission provides a forum for exploration of the social and political influence of Christian missions worldwide. Christian missions represent a unique site of observation for
the study of modern societies, in the "north" as well as in the "south".
This is the reason why missions constitute the "prime material" of the journal Social Sciences & Missions.

Our aim is not to study
missions for themselves, but rather as "total social facts", an idiom,
which history, anthropology, sociology or political science can use to analyse
reality and give it meaning. This constitutes the originality of our
approach – to the best of our knowledge, Social Sciences & Missions is the only
social sciences journal dedicated to this object of study.

The origins of Social Sciences & Missions go back to a series of occasional papers called Le Fait Missionnaire. Histoire et héritages – Approche pluridisciplinaire, launched in 1995 at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Headed into its 26th volume in 2013, SSM is now published thrice a year by E.J Brill (Leiden) under the title Social Sciences and Missions / Sciences sociales et mission. For the journal's website at Brill, click here; for recent articles of the journal online, go to Ingenta or Swetswise. Some older articles can be downloaded for free on the present website.